The Botanical Gardens Gift Shop
We all wear the same things, bright scarves, artful earrings,
shoulder-length or cropped graying hair. Groomed yet
somehow vaguely askew, our reading glasses perched
on top of our heads, forgetting to wear them as we squint
at the narrow lines of print in a gardening book, in a collection
of meaningful quotes. You in the linen jacket, you in that apricot
cardigan wrap, the woman on line who shares a rueful smile
with me, a stack of blue and green cotton napkins in her arms
and another book she doesn't need. The wave of affection
I feel for these women surprises me at first until I realize,
oh, I know you. These fine lines on our brows etching proof
of worries and years of smiling, facing things that have blessed
or shattered us. I have seen you put on your brave face at the
doctors, or the nursing home, at the hospice, or the funeral
parlor as you rise to greet the next person and the next moment,
and the moment after that one, all hard. I know the effort made
to achieve that polite public response, yes, I'm fine, thank you
for asking. I know the moments you have failed, the private
breakdowns, the pointless arguments with God, of being so
tremendously alone you cannot take your next breath. But
then you do. I know how you chin up and try again. How
you reapply your lipstick with a shaking hand and then open
the door, shoulders back, and enter the world. To some,
your actions might look like small things, inconsequential.
I see you choose a child's book on gardening for perhaps a
grandchild or a niece or nephew, because one is never
too young to learn how to rise up each year and bloom.
Susan Moorhead
from
The Night Ghost
Another poem by her on the blog
here.
